The phenomenon of “lone soldiers” predates the modern State of Israel. Today, the country is home to an estimated 7,000 of them.

Posted on May 15, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
These young Jews leave everything behind to defend Israel.
Joshua Hoffman
May 14, 2025

When Edan Alexander was released this week after more than 580 days in Hamas captivity, the news resonated far beyond Israel’s borders. Alexander, born in Israel and raised in New Jersey, had voluntarily returned to his birth country to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a “lone soldier” (chayal boded in Hebrew) — a term reserved for those serving in the army without the support of immediate family in the country. His story is heartbreaking and heroic: Kidnapped on October 7th from an outpost in Kissufim, Edan had chosen to forgo his weekend leave in order to stay on base and serve. He wasn’t alone in that kind of sacrifice. Alexander is part of a growing and remarkable phenomenon in Israeli society — one that has only intensified in the aftermath of the October 7th massacre: young men and women, many from the Jewish Diaspora, leaving behind lives of comfort and security to join the IDF, not for personal gain, but out of principle, identity, and purpose. READ MORE

AXIOS Hamas approached pro-Trump activist for secret talks that freed Edan Alexander The backchannel talks that led to the release of Edan Alexander began with a message from a Hamas official to Bishara Bahbah, the former leader of “Arab Americans for Trump,” two Israeli officials, one Palestinian official and one U.S. official tell Axios. Hamas was seeking a way to convince President Trump to put more pressure on Israel, and Trump’s team was intent on freeing the last living American held in Gaza. Bahbah, a Palestinian-American businessman who helped Trump make inroads with Arab voters in 2024, became the unlikely intermediary.

NEW YORK POST Freed hostage Edan Alexander posts sweet Instagram message as he awaits return to New Jersey: ‘Home Sweet Home’ Newly freed Israeli-American Edan Alexander hopes to return to New Jersey soon with his family — as the 21-year-old recently enjoyed a cold beer for the first time since he was released by Hamas.  Alexander, who was freed Monday after 584 days in captivity, shared his first Instagram story, with the Tenafly resident flashing a smile and Corona bottle in hand, surrounded by loved ones on the hospital rooftop. “Home Sweet Home,” the caption read.

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“The tiny Gulf nation has spent almost $100 billion to establish its influence in Congress, universities, newsrooms, think tanks, and corporations. What does it want in return?”

Posted on May 14, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
How Qatar Bought America
Frannie Block and Jay Solomon
May 13, 2025

…But Qatar is also a seat of the Muslim Brotherhood, a crucial source of financing to Hamas, a diplomatic and energy partner of Iran, a refuge for the Taliban’s exiled political leadership, financier and cheerleader of Palestinian terrorism, and the chief propagandist of Islamism through its media powerhouse, Al Jazeera, which reaches 430 million people in more than 150 countries. Key members of Qatar’s royal family have made their admiration for Islamism—and Hamas specifically—very clear. Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of Qatar’s emir and the chairperson of an educational nonprofit funneling millions into American schools, praised the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 massacre, Yahya Sinwar: “He will live on,” she wrote on X after his death last year, “and they will be gone.” READ MORE

JNS Melanie Phillips: The gold-plated peacenik in the White House There’s no doubting Trump’s genuine commitment to Israel and the Jewish people. But it’s now clear that he has an almost messianic belief that he can end all wars and bring peace to the world through his ability to make deals. He thinks that he can make even the most bloodthirsty tyrants an offer they can’t refuse. He doesn’t care about the justice of a cause. He just wants to stop the killing. Thus, he has bashed heads together in Pakistan and India to forge an uneasy peace. He believes he can do the same with Russia and Ukraine. And he’s now applying the same principle to the Middle East.

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Wounded soldiers from the war meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and call for a decisive victory in Gaza. Netanyahu: “A decision has been made to go all the way. We are very close”

Posted on May 12, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

ARUTZ SHEVA
Netanyahu to wounded soldiers: Things will happen in Gaza you haven’t seen before
Hezki Baruch
May 12, 2025

Reservist soldiers who were wounded during the fighting over the past year and a half met on Monday evening with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of the activities of the War Wounded Forum. During the meeting, the Prime Minister told the soldiers, “We will conquer Gaza, and our security control will remain there forever. Within days, things are going to happen in Gaza. Things will happen that you haven’t seen before.” He added, “We didn’t do everything we’ve done in Gaza so far just to return to the starting point. Things have changed; a decision has been made to go all the way. We are very close.” Members of the forum had previously clarified their demand to achieve a complete victory in the war against Hamas and to end what they called “political and security stagnation.” READ MORE

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Smithsonian exhibit, which explores architecture and conflict in the Middle East, accused of aligning with pro-Hamas messaging and promoting false claims that “U.S.-backed Israeli operations deliberately targeted civilian homes.”

Posted on May 11, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
Israeli NGO demands Smithsonian cancel ‘Anti-Israel’ exhibit in D.C.
May 8, 2025

The Shurat HaDin Law Center has formally urged the White House to cancel a Smithsonian museum exhibit it labels as “provocative and anti-Israel,” warning that it promotes a narrative sympathetic to terrorism and detrimental to U.S. interests. In a letter to Vice President JD Vance and other senior U.S. officials, Shurat HaDin President Nitsana Darshan-Leitner criticized the Patterns of Life exhibit, which is currently on display at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She described it as “emotionally manipulative storytelling using selectively curated data to promote an extremist, anti-American, and anti-Israel agenda under the guise of academic and artistic engagement.”  READ MORE

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“Stupefyingly, it is simply impossible to change the wicked media narrative that Israel is starving Gazan civilians to death”

Posted on May 11, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
The indestructible myth of famine in Gaza
Melanie Phillips
May 8, 2025

Yet again, the myth has been revived that there is a famine in the Gaza Strip. This claim, which has done so much to incite attacks on Jews, has been promulgated repeatedly by mainstream Western media during the past 18 months of war. It is a lie that distorts yet another lie. Time and again, U.N. agencies and NGOs have warned that famine and starvation are imminent. But this has never happened. More food has been admitted to Gaza than people need. The problem has been that Hamas took much of it to feed themselves and to sell it on the black market to finance their infrastructure of war. Nevertheless, the Gazans have overwhelmingly remained conspicuously well-fed, while the people who really have been starved are the Israeli hostages they hold captive. Yet the media has continued to insist that civilians in Gaza are being starved to death. READ MORE

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Chicago and NYC police suicide rates are a national tragedy; “Over the past decade, Chicago has become the anti-cop capital of America”

Posted on May 11, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
How Can You Be a Cop in a City That Hates You?
Olivia Reingold
May 7, 2025

“They treat cops like tissues. They just throw us away.” That is how Rick Nigro, a retired sergeant, describes Chicago after nearly three decades on its police force. “You ever hear about firemen killing themselves? No. They’re heroes. They’re idolized,” added Sergeant Nigro. “We’re the pariahs of the civil service.” In March 2021, after Officer James Daly, an acquaintance of Nigro, committed suicide, he wrote then-mayor Lori Lightfoot a letter “We are woefully unprepared to deal with the physical human stress that it takes upon us,” he wrote. A local TV station picked up news of his letter, and Lightfoot released a statement promising “to ensure that Chicago’s police officers feel supported and valued.” Later that week, another officer—Jeffrey Troglia, a father of three—fatally shot himself in his basement. By the end of the year, Nigro himself retired. READ MORE

NEW YORK POST Police suicide epidemic continues to grip Long Island as cops confirm body found on Nassau beach If an autopsy confirms the self-inflicted killing, it would mark the seventh police officer to commit suicide in New York state this year. At its current pace, the state is on track to see more than 20 police suicides by the end of 2025 — far surpassing 2024’s total of 13.

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US Ambassador to Israel defends Trump Administration’s decision to reach a ceasefire agreement with the Houthis without involving Israel or an agreement by the Houthis to stop attacking Israel

Posted on May 8, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

ARUTZ SHEVA
Huckabee: US doesn’t need “permission” from Israel to make deal with Houthis
May 8, 2025

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee defended the Trump Administration’s decision to reach an agreement with the Houthi rebel group that did not include Israeli involvement or an agreement by the Houthis to stop attacking Israel, saying that the US did not need Israel’s “permission” for such an agreement. “The United States isn’t required to get permission from Israel to make some type of arrangement that would get the Houthis from firing on our ships,” Huckabee told Israel’s Channel 12 News. He added, “Here’s what I can tell you, because I had a conversation with both the president and the vice president last night … There’s 700,000 Americans living in Israel. If the Houthis want to continue doing things to Israel and they hurt an American, then it becomes our business.” READ MORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS Israel says it has disabled Yemen’s main airport with airstrikes against rebels The Israeli military bombed the airport in Yemen’s rebel-held capital Tuesday, claiming to have disabled the airfield in an attack that left commercial aircraft burning on the tarmac as its fighter jets struck power plants and other targets. The rare daytime attack on Sanaa, held by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels since 2014, came as part of a second day of Israeli airstrikes in response to a Houthi ballistic missile striking the grounds of Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv. The Houthis described the Israeli attacks as killing at least seven people and wounding 74 others over two days.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Trump ditched Israel with surprise Houthi truce. That doesn’t bode well on Iran The Israeli Air Force struck Houthi-controlled infrastructure on Tuesday as its planes flattened the airport in Sanaa, a day after Israeli jets pounded the port city of Hodeida. Then, US President Donald Trump dropped his own bombshell. Without coordinating with Israel or other allies, he announced during a White House meeting that the Houthis had agreed to stop attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea, and said that the US would halt its attacks on the Iran-backed group.

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Taheri: “If Iran expects to be treated differently, it should become different, after which it could spend fortunes on enriching the uranium it has no use for”

Posted on May 8, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
US Sens. Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham Unveil New Resolution Demanding Iran ‘Dismantle’ Nuclear Program
Corey Walker
May 8, 2025

US Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (AK) and Lindsey Graham (SC) on Thursday unveiled a new resolution demanding Iran completely “dismantle” its nuclear program. The resolution was introduced as the Trump administration continued to engage in talks with Iran to negotiate a deal to curb the latter’s nuclear activity, which Western countries believe is ultimately geared to build nuclear weapons… “Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon; that’s off the table,” Graham said during a press conference on Thursday. The resolution calls on the White House to pursue the “complete dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, cautioning that Tehran would use a nuclear warhead to “carry out one of the most extreme religious ideas on the planet” — a reference to the Islamist ideology of Iran’s rulers. READ MORE

GATESTONE Amir Taheri: When Tehran Demands the Impossible What [John] Kerry, [French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël] Barrot and the retired Iranian diplomats ignore is the principle of sovereignty, under which no sitting administration or parliament could commit ad aeternam all future administrations and parliaments in a democracy to any agreement. An international contract or treaty isn’t the same as a private one concluded under the jurisdiction of a state, where courts could impose compliance through domestic jurisprudence. In other words, even if Trump gives the guarantee that Iran wants, and even if the US Congress passes it as a treaty, the principle known as rebus sic stantibus could always be applied “where there has been a fundamental change of circumstances, a party may withdraw from or terminate a treaty.”

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Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, was beheaded on camera by al-Qaeda affiliated Pakistani terrorists

Posted on May 8, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
Indian forces kill terrorist involved in murder of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl
Corinne Baum
May 8, 2025

The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military had killed an Islamist terrorist who was involved in the murder Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s governing party, said that the Indian army killed Pakistani terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar in “Operation Sindhoor.” A group of Islamist terrorists, including Azhar, kidnapped and murdered Pearl in 2002. The terrorist was affiliated with al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist terror group that aims to separate Kashmir from India and fully incorporate it into Pakistan. READ MORE

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Mo Khan went on antisemitic firebrand Stew Peters’ podcast after incident at Dave Portnoy’s Barstool bar

Posted on May 7, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FORWARD
Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
Hannah Feuer
May 7, 2025

Mo Khan, the suspended Temple University student who posted video of a “F— the Jews” sign at a Philadelphia sports bar, could have gone on a free educational trip to Auschwitz — as Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy initially offered. Instead, the 21-year-old appeared on Holocaust denier Stew Peters’ podcast to tell his side of the story. Peters, a longtime promoter of antisemitic conspiracy theories, has called for the mass deportation of all Jews from the U.S., claimed that President Donald Trump’s support for Israel was driven by “Jewish paymasters,” and blamed the assassination of JFK on the Mossad. On Tuesday’s podcast, Khan said he “absolutely” agreed with Peters that people should “join forces” to fight “Jewish supremacy.” READ MORE

FORWARD Can a visit to Auschwitz really change an antisemite? When two customers at a Philadelphia sports bar asked waitresses to make a sign that said “F— the Jews,” they probably didn’t expect a free trip to Auschwitz. But that’s what Dave Portnoy, the controversial founder of Barstool Sports — and a proud Jew — initially offered. After firing the two employees involved in the incident, which also implicated a Temple University student, Portnoy said he’d pay for the customers to go on a tour of the Nazi death camp. By Monday, he had rescinded the offer to the student, accusing him of walking back his apology.

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